Many years ago, when John Munch been a young (or rather, younger) man, and after an evening of breaking dishes and screaming curses, Wife Number Two had screamed at the top of lungs in a voice that woke all the neighbors:
“I’m just a fucking rebound, John! That’s all I am to you! A fucking rebound from your ex who just happened to put out!”
He ducked out of the way of a flying meat tenderizer before swearing it wasn’t so and begging for forgiveness like a good, eternally guilty husband did, and she’d shrieked at him for a bit longer before locking him out of the bedroom without even the benefit of clean boxer shorts. John had stared at the closed door before grabbing a coat and taking a long walk in the cold, listening as Baltimore PD sirens howled in the night around the harbor. By daylight, he’d covered most of the city by foot, and the only thing he had to show for it was the fact that Wife Number Two was right.
Which was why she became Ex-Wife Number Two within a few weeks.
As a older man (though he hated that particular adjective almost as much as he hated idiocy, which said something), he found himself repeating the midnight-walk habit in a new city, wandering his borough with a certain apathy and his hands in his pockets, hoping to whatever sadistic God there was that he wouldn’t get mugged. Not that it really mattered, anyway.
There’d been less screaming, this time. Less throwing things. Instead, it had been all silent, simmering disgust. “What the fuck am I to you, John? Some sick rebound from Brian fuckin’ Cassidy? Do you miss his pasty white ass, or somethin’?”
Leave it to Fin to sum up three years of conflict in something like three sentences.
It was cold in New York, dark but loud, sirens and screams and traffic always echoing, always moving. John’s third wife had suggested they move to the country, but he’d never liked that idea. He’d never liked the idea of complete, suffocating silence surrounding him. Darkness was one thing; total emptiness, another.
And really, the hills of Maryland were kind of dumpy, anyway.
That’s what had first attracted him to his new partner, the loud-mouth ex-narcotics detective with the sneering expression and the stupid silk ties that he’d – thank God – gotten rid of. There’d been too much silence, when Cassidy had left. Too many empty corners and empty nights. And John, while not a drinker, had found that whiskey really did help to fill the holes left by getting absolutely none for weeks.
Well, maybe not all the holes.
From the very first moment, Fin was nothing like Cassidy. Brash and ballsy, a “gangsta” of the highest degree, all undercover-manners and interrogation roughness, and – perhaps most surprising – very, very smart. Talking to Cassidy often reminded John of talking to a spoiled, self-obsessed six-year-old; he was all talk but no brains behind it, and often said some of the most moronic things only to have someone much smarter prove him gloriously wrong. Cassidy read the articles in Playboy (yeah, right), while Fin could quote Plato (though he never did). The differences were so profound that Munch wondered if he’d even like working with his new partner. After all, nothing said “buzzkill” like working with a very smart, very experienced, very smooth-talking non-idiot.
Or a very smart, very experienced, very smooth-talking non-Cassidy, though Munch never admitted aloud to that one.
And even after three years together – four as partners, and three of this, cold-midnight-walk inducing whatever-it-was – they’d never talked about Cassidy. The first time they’d fucked – rough, restless, two men looking for both pain and comfort after a tough case and a case of beers – he’d slipped, started saying the familiar name, and Fin had said nothing. Looked at him, dark eyes and dark brows, but said nothing. Not even his eyes said anything about it. And when one night became a dozen and eventually every night was spent together until, really, it just made more sense just to have one apartment, they never mentioned it. Never mentioned those two syllables on one rough night.
And John knew better to slip again, which was probably why Fin was so upset, in the first place.
Of course, going out to a bar had been Fin’s oh-so-brilliant brainchild. After a triple, a tough case, and listening to Olivia and Elliot scream at one another about stupid shit (their fights, like those between siblings, were always about stupid shit), Fin had thought going to a bar would be a good idea. Get their minds off the case and the screaming, have a beer, go home and sleep. Or, you know, “sleep.” Fin’s eyes had, after all, had that spark that suggested that sleep was not nearly as important as the other, more carnal activities that also tended to take place in their bed.
Neither of them had planned on Brian Cassidy being at the bar when they got there.
John hadn’t seen him – all brown hair and boyish good looks – since he’d left SVU, three full days after leaving John. He’d played the emotion card, played that it was too painful for him to work with the basest of human depravity day-after-day, and Cragen had eaten the lies up. What he never said was that it was also too hard to talk to John after the fight, after the harsh words, after the stupid fucking cheating and the lying and everything else. Cassidy was like an uncontrollable child; what he wanted, he got. If it was John Munch, he got John Munch. If it was Olivia Benson, he got Olivia Benson. Same with a transfer out of SVU.
John had frozen in the doorway, Fin’s hand on his elbow and tugging at him to come into the bar, because it was January and, really, who stood in the doorway in January? But John couldn’t come in. He could just stare, boyish good looks three tables away, laughing and drinking with some girl in a skimpy top, gesturing with his Budweiser bottle…until he looked up.
If January was cold, Cassidy’s eyes were colder.
He gave into Fin’s tugging and allowed himself to be lead to a booth, back of the bar, and ordered whiskey. Fin knew about the whiskey – the rarity it was, the fact he only drank it when he was especially depressed – but didn’t say anything. Because he knew better. Fin always knew better, which was something Cassidy had never understood; he said everything and anything that entered his unfiltered little brain, no matter how thoughtless it was.
So he drank his whiskey and talked to Fin – listened to Fin, mostly – and bobbed his head to the latest pop track and watched Cassidy not watch him, head bent low to Ms. Skimpy Top and smile still prickling the nerves in his body, four years later, electric shock to brain and spine and other, less mentionable spots. And if Fin noticed, he didn’t say anything, and they left together with Cassidy’s eyes on his back and Cassidy’s voice in his head.
How’s your new boyfriend, Munch? Is he hot?
John mentally answered yes to the mental Cassidy, that Fin knew the things Cassidy had never learned. Cassidy’s fucking was like a horny teenager, really, free of foreplay and arousal and full of getting off right this minute. The urgency had been exciting at first, but urgency only lasted so long. Fin could be urgent, but he could be cautious too, a practiced lingering languidness and ease, fingers and hands and lips, caresses so warm and so inspiring that John was amazed he had the resolve to hold out and wait.
Sometimes, he didn’t have the resolve, something he’d learned from Cassidy.
After the bar, it was all urgency. In the car, in the elevator, finally in the apartment and into the room. No foreplay. No prelude. Fin growling, demanding in a rough groan that got him nowhere that they slow down, that he was fucking tired and wanted to at least take a few minutes to enjoy the man he had barely seen all day, but John had none of it. It was all Cassidy – he was all Cassidy – and before he knew it, he was at the precipice and diving off.
And in diving, he slipped all over again.
Fin had just stared up at him, his face masked with anger and hurt. Simmering disgust, John had thought, and then Fin had asked. Asked if he was a rebound. A cheap replacement for the real thing.
John hadn’t been asked to leave. There were no doors slammed in his face, no meat tenderizers spiraling at his head, no more curse words. But the silence had been enough, and before he knew it, he was dressed and out the door, down the stairs and into the openness of the night.
Into the noise of the night.
He’d wanted to tell Fin the truth, but what was the truth? What was truth, in a world of cover-ups and lies? That sounded like the cheap answer, really, comparing his relationship to the denial of alien life existing. The truth was, well, that there was a truth. The silence had been suffocating, so he found noise. Noise in silk ties and ugly suits that they’d given to Salvation Army. Noise in a man not afraid to offer himself – “I’ll be your boy, John” – and never hesitating. Noise who read Plato and actually knew who the Marquis deSade was, which really said something (especially since explaining it to Cassidy had just been painful, and not in a deSade sort of way, either).
Daylight came over the city and its constant clamor, and John was somehow not surprised to find the door unlocked and Fin sitting in his boxers in the living room, television blaring reruns of MTV’s “Cribs” and all the lights on. Fin wriggled when he closed the door and, by time he’d hung up his coat, the other man was staring at him from across the room, unnervingly watching his every movement.
“Yo, where the Hell were you? I almost called Cragen.”
John smirked and flopped down on the couch, feet up on the coffee table. Fin frowned – he hated shoes on the coffee table – but said nothing about it. “And I’m sure our dear captain would appreciate being woken up in the middle of the night over one of our quarrels,” he replied, tucking his hands behind his head.
Fin kept staring. He probably would have stared all day, if John didn’t find staring to be completely unnerving. So instead he sighed, untucked his hands and tossed them into the air, as if resigning himself to some sort of defeat.
“Yes,” he answered the question finally, meeting Fin’s gaze – Fin’s stare, actually – evenly. “You were a… I hate the word rebound. You know that, right?”
“John – ”
“Okay, fine. Yes, you were a rebound.” He waited for something on Fin’s face – anything, really – but there was no sign of an emotional response. Just an even gaze, and the stupid television on in the background. “But that was then, and this is now. And when it stopped just being about the sex, it stopped just being a rebound. You know?”
Fin’s lips twitched slightly, almost into a smile. Almost. “So, what, you sayin’ that it’s not about the sex anymore, John?”
John smiled back. “Well, it’s always about the sex, but you know what I mean.” He shrugged. “And… And I’m sorry. For never telling you.”
This time, Fin did smile. “Ya didn’t need to tell me, John. I always knew.”
John couldn’t help but thinking that Cassidy would never have been able to figure something like that one out all on his own.
But instead of saying it, he smiled back, and patted Fin’s knee. Somehow, with the sunlight coming through the drapes and the noise of the morning city starting up in the background, it felt like the emptiness was chased away. At least, for now. There’d be other bars and other fights and other midnight walks, but for now, it was enough.
“Breakfast?” Fin asked, stretching and moving to slide off the couch.
John caught him by the arm and pulled him back into the upholstery, smiling. “Later,” he suggested, and Fin arched an eyebrow over those familiarly sparked eyes. “But right now, I think we have some making up to do.”
Yeah, he decided as Fin rolled his eyes but did smile back. It was enough.
